Posts Tagged ‘Palestinian Authority’

The products of six of the biggest Israeli companies will now be absolutely barred in the territories currently under Palestinian control, a senior Palestinian Authority official declared on Monday, Feb. 9.

Mahmoud al-Aloul, who is a high-ranking member of the PA as well as a member of Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party Central Committee made the announcement at a press conference Monday evening, according to the Palestinian Arab news source Ma’an.

The Israeli companies banned under the latest dictate are the chocolate and candy company Elite, which is part of another banned Israeli company, the Strauss food and beverage company; Tnuva, which produces cheese and other dairy products; the beverage companies Prigat and Jafora (which includes Shweppes and RC Cola, in Israel); and Osem, which produces snacks and soups, as well as other food products. All of the companies are located within Green Line Israel.

The Arab retailers will be given two weeks to remove all the banned Israeli products from their shelves. Al-Aloul said special inspectors will be touring the markets to ensure compliance with the ruling. He said the decision to ban the Israeli products was a response to Israeli attempts to pressure the Palestinian Arabs “who are demanding their freedom and rights and have been punished collectively after they resorted to the U.N.”

Armed Palestinian Authority forces clashed with gunmen near Shechem Thursday and also raided the house of a former intelligence chief in another round of violence that has escaped the eye of international media but is the seed of self-destruction.

Thee PA soldiers were injured Thursday at Balata, one the largest hell-holes in the string of so-called refugee camps that the United Nations created in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Arab countries rather to use as a future threat to eliminate Israel as Jewish state through Arab immigration.

Well-armed gunmen in Balata blocked roads and shot at the Palestinian Authority forces that were targeting drug dealers, who also have a large cache of weapons. Heavy gunfire lasted for several hours, and schools were closed.

PA forces raided a building used by the Palestinian Authority’s former general intelligence chief, according to the Ma’an news agency based in Bethlehem.

Jamal Tirawi, now a Fatah-affiliated member of the Palestinian Legislative Council who lives in the same building and is a brother of the former intelligence official, said the pre-dawn raid violated his immunity as a legislator.

Drug and weapons trafficking is widespread throughout the Palestinian Authority, especially in the camps that are turning into a boomerang for the United Nations, whose universal policy on refugees does not include offspring. It made an exception for Arabs who used to live in Israel and places no limit on retaining the refugee status for all generations, even those who are born today.

The number of Arabs who fled, encouraged by Arab leaders to leave or were chased out of Israel in fighting in the War for Independence in 1948 varies from the original Arab estimate of 300,00 to 700,00 that later was used once it became clear that a higher number could be used for political gain.

U.N. Resolution 194 stated that those “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss or damage to property”.

The United Nations in 1949 created UNRWA “to carry out direct relief and works programs for Palestine refugees.”

There are anywhere from 4-7 million Arabs living in as “refugees,” including approximately 300,000 in Judea and Samaria.

The IDF often enters Balata to arrest terrorists, but the PA raids on Thursday touched only a small part of web of criminal and terrorist networks that stretch from Bedouin villages in the Negev to Gaza, Judea and Samaria, as well as Arab and Bedouin gangs in eastern Jerusalem, Galilee and several Arab cities in Israel.

UNRWA is the real “occupier” of refugee camps, where crime and violence are a way of life. The villages are a ticking bomb that would explode in the face of the Palestinian Authority if it were ever to become an independent country.

Terrorists from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) operating in Gaza have united with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah faction to silence Palestinian journalists, Arab affairs journalist Khaled Abu Toameh writes in an article for the Gatestone Institute.

Over the past few days, a number of Palestinian journalists have received death threats from the “Gaza branch” of ISIS and were accused of publishing “lies” about ISIS in particular and about Islam in general.

The threats were sent via social media and messages to the journalists’ mobile phones.

“Islamic State warns the journalist and media people against their continued and constant attacks on us,” reads the text of one message sent. “We in Islamic State affirm that we will execute the rule of the Shari’a [Islamic law] against these apostates, who are sowing discord among Muslims.”

Many Palestinian journalists were already being targeted by Hamas in Gaza and the PA in Judea and Samaria. Those threats were reported last summer and confirmed by international journalists after they once they escaped from Gaza and reached their home countries, where they were free from the danger of being killed by Hamas and its terrorist allies.

The latest threats have only ratcheted up the pressure on these reporters, who are taking the threats seriously and are increasing their vigilance and their self-censorship.

“Of course we are afraid,” a veteran journalist in Gaza told Toameh. “You never know who is hiding behind the mask. It could be someone from ISIS or Hamas or Islamic Jihad or even Fatah. It is not safe to be a journalist living in the West Bank or Gaza.”

“The threats against Palestinian journalists are important because this is no longer a ‘local’ issue or an internal Palestinian affair,” Toameh writes. “Those who are seeking to silence the Palestinian journalists are also trying to prevent the international media from learning about what is really happening in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“A Palestinian journalist working with international news agencies and newspapers is not going to report truthfully and honestly, when he or she is facing daily threats from so many parties. The only stories these journalists are going to offer the international media are ones that depict Israel in a negative manner. The Palestinian journalists know that at the end of the day they need to go back to their families in Ramallah and Gaza without having to worry about masked men knocking on their doors at night.

“The threats against Palestinian journalists are worrying, and should be exposed and brought to the attention of human rights groups around the world. More disturbing is that many of the international journalists operating in the region are willing to turn a blind eye to the dangers facing their Palestinian colleagues and employees. The international media outlets and their representatives are prepared to take almost any story offered to them by Palestinian reporters, especially if the story consists of anti-Israel statements,” Toameh writes.

The above is especially important to consider in light of the current investigation into last summer’s Operation Protective Edge, being carried out by the United Nations Human Rights Council. As they did with depositions taken for the notorious and inaccurate Goldstone Report, the investigators are taking at face value anything said to them by Gaza residents they interview. They fail to understand the nature of the threat under which the average citizen lives his or her life in Gaza – nor do most “outsiders” realize how many so-called “civilians” are ancillary members or supporters of terror groups as well.

As a result, the evidence gathered is skewed from the start, though the investigators are wholly unaware of it, or worse, could care less.

International media by and large relies on news reports that have been self-censored by on-the-scene Palestinian stringers who are frankly afraid for their lives.
Threats by ISIS will now only raise the heat in the area.

Palestinian Authority security forces have arrested approximately 15 Arabs in recent months on suspicion of links with the Islamic State (ISIS),

Senior PA sources told the Israel news site Walla! that several of those arrested were identified as being associated with ISIS while others were suspected of establishing links with the terrorist organization.

While not stated, it can be assumed that many if not all of those arrested were carried out based on intelligence provided by Israel.

Reports that the Palestinian Authority will cut off security coordination with Israel are empty threats. PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas knows very well that his life is dependent on Israel’s help in fingering terrorists who have targeted him and other officials n his regime.

Walla! also reported that the Palestinian Authority previously has arrested dozens of other Arabs on suspicion of links with ISIS but that most of them have been released.

The anti-Israel is using the left-wing oriented Avaaz web platform to petition Facebook to ban promotions for homes for Jews in Judea and Samaria based on the claim they are “illegal.”

A Facebook representative told The Washington Post it is “investigating” the claim.

Several promotions on Facebook are sponsored by the Israeli branch of the American real estate company RE/MAX.

“For Palestinians, seeing settlement ads is a reminder of the pain and humiliation they have to endure as a result of these war crimes,” Fadi Quran, Avaaz’s campaign director in the West Bank, said in a statement.

Facebook’s policy prohibits advertising of illegal activity.

The question boils down to whether there is a case that it is illegal for Jews to live in Judea and Samaria as stated, but not decided in any court, by the United Nations and most of the international community.

A committee of three legal experts tabled a report to the Netanyahu government three years ago that not only are “settlements” legal but also that Jews have the right to live anywhere they want in all areas under Israel control.

Israel has passed legislation to put under its sovereignty some areas under Israeli control since the Six-Day War in 1967, namely the Golan Heights and half of Jerusalem, but the United Nations does not accept the Israeli law. Judea and Samaria remain under the authority of the military.

A Washington Post foreign affairs reporters’ article on the petition noted that Facebook previously has banned all advertisements that were in support of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

If ads for Assad, guilty of war crimes, are banned by Facebook, the implicit and ludicrous conclusion is that promoting homes for Jews should be banned because the Palestinian Authority calls them “war crimes.”

That explains the sudden shift in the Palestinian Authority strategy to accuse Israel of war crimes in the International Criminal Court. Instead of trying to prove Israel committed war crimes against Hamas, whose inhumanity easily could be exposed , PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas is headed for the ICC with a sheaf of documents to claim that building homes for Jews are war crimes.

Supporters of the anti-Israeli petition wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg:

We were shocked to see ads for illegal Israeli settlements on Facebook. The establishment and expansion of settlements is considered a war crime.

Settlements are a main cause of violence and discrimination in the region. Facebook’s advertising guidelines state that “Ads may not constitute, facilitate or promote illegal activity.” We therefore call upon you to ban all advertisements for settlement homes or settlement based products from showing on Facebook.”

Nearly 30,000 people have signed the petition, and that number is likely to grow geometrically following the free promotion for the petition provided by The Washington Post.

American taxpayers’ money helped fund a pro-Palestinian Authority group to encourage “non-violent resistance to end the occupation,” according to material gleaned from the website OneVoiceMovement website, which is involved in the “V15″ campaign against Prime Minister Netanyahu, as reported here.

“OneVoicePalestine” received grants from the U.S. State Dept. until last November, weeks after most political observers said it was only a matter of time before the Netanyahu coalition would collapse and new elections would be held.

The hammer fell in December, and two months before, OneVoicePalestine (OVP) launched “The Land is Ours” campaign last September 25 to promote the stated American policy of a “two-state solution” and the un-stated policy of deciding the borders for a Palestinian Authority country.

The OneVoice site, in a blurb on the video it produced, stated its aim is to “encourage young Palestinians to participate in non-violent resistance to end the occupation, realize the two-state solution, and establish an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

It added:

The campaign builds on the 2012 mobilization effort – “The Land is Ours, Leave Us Be” – which addressed the expansion of settlements by planting hundreds of trees in a number of areas threatened by confiscation.

Planting trees, borrowing the Jewish National Fund campaign decades ago to plant trees in Israel, is the message of “non-violence resistance.” The video does not show Arabs waving the PA’s Fatah movement flag, emblazoned with a rifle.

Instead, the film shows Arabs marching in Judea and Samaria and planting trees but carefully omits facts that many if not most of the campaigns have been carried out on land where violence is likely because Arabs trespasses on land where Jews live. Their justification is that their claim on the land is valid and that Jews’ claims are not valid.

The Palestinian Authority has backing from the Obama administration, which always says that it is up to both sides — the Palestinian Authority and Israel — to determine borders. However, government grants over the decades, as with the OneVoice video “The Land Is Ours, Leave Us Be,” have been used to contradict the supposed policy that the “final borders” are not to be settled by unilateral actions but by negotiations.

By that definition, Israel also has taken “unilateral actions” every time a Jew builds a home in Judea and Samaria or in areas of Jerusalem claimed by the Palestinian Authority.

The difference is that when Jews take action, the Obama administration complains it is an obstacle to peace; when Arabs take action, it is considered their right.

Against this background, the call for “non-violent resistance” is at best naïve.

Official Palestinian Authority encouragement and promotion of violence has been documented at least every week by The Jewish Press and other media, often based on research by the Palestinian Media Watch.

Al Monitor, a predominantly pro-Arab organization, wrote nearly a year ago:

Although major Palestinian nationalist and Islamist movements publicly support and endorse what they call the “popular resistance,” there is little evidence that this support is more than lip service….

Two other problems have prevented nonviolence from becoming the major force in Palestine….Leaders of the movement have been unable or unwilling to show the kind of discipline that Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. showed in keeping the movement totally nonviolent. This partial nonviolence [sic] that features throwing stones at Israeli troops — often at the end of a mass demonstration — not only results in a brutal Israeli crackdown, but more importantly, it weakens the stance of a nonviolent movement.

It added that the second problem that silences the nonviolent movement “has been its inability to involve Israeli peace activists” because of “the lack of clarity about cooperating with Israelis and the ready accusation of ‘normalization” with Israel.

The bold statement that throwing stones is only “partial” non-violent illustrates where the American-funded OneVoice campaign is headed, whether intentional or not.

Violence becomes “non-violence” simply by changing the definition of the term, just as The Jewish Press pointed out here that the White House defeats terror by re-defining it.